Presenting to a CEO audience

Presenting to a CEO audience

Professional investor, sales, and conference presentations

A former McKinsey consultant

An internationally recognised designer

Most people who understand business, do not understand design. Most people who understand design, do not understand business. Jan Schultink is one of the few people in the world who masters both fields. Jan is a former McKinsey strategy consultant. During his 10 years with the Firm in Amsterdam and London, Jan worked mainly in M&A, on the sell-side of major transactions between Fortune 500 companies. An important component of his work involved making the case to CEOs why they should acquire or invest in his clients.

In the early 2000s, Jan moved to Tel Aviv where his first presentation design experience was around creating investor presentations for startup companies that were in the process of raising money from venture capitalists. His professional (but boring) management consulting charts over the years turned into powerful visuals. His presentation design blog gave Jan an international client base, the majority of work now comes from outside Israel. Today clients range from the smallest startups, to the largest Fortune 500 companies, to venture capital and private equity funds that are raising capital.

Typical projects

What sort of presentations do we design

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Typical projects

What sort of presentations do we design

Startup pitches toVCs and angel investors

The challenge is how to explain a completely new concept to an impatient investor who is flooded with pitches and business plans every day. These presentations are a combination of bold, highly visual slides in the beginning to explain the problem (and the solution), and more conservative, consulting-style slides in the back to discuss the team, the milestones, and the financial projections.

Fortune 500analyst presentations

These presentations focus on visualising a lot of financial data in such a way that the right messages pop out, which requires more than just copy-pasting data from the accounts. Especially for longer investor days, communicating the strategy of a large corporation is the second part of these presentations

VC/PE institutionalfundraising presentations

Venture capital and private equity funds need to raise money themselves, and the presentations they use often sound/look the same. First-time funds need to pitch their credibility, follow-on fund raises need to present their portfolio and track record.

Pitchcompetitions

These presentations are very short and need to be orchestrated carefully. The work here involves almost scripting a movie: an interesting story that does not necessarily cover all aspects of the business, the main objective is to excite the audience enough so they want to find out more

corporatesales presentations

As a McKinsey consultant, I sat on the other side of the table evaluating RFPs (request for proposals). Especially in high-tech, many sales presentations use the same jargon. We help you pitch to large organisations with original language.

Conferencepresentations

For larger audiences you cannot simply put up the slides from your sales presentation. It is almost impossible to gage audience feedback and adjust your pitch mid way. You need to get it right beforehand. We can help.

Presentation design portfolio

Scroll down to see examples of presentations (non-confidential ones)

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Presentation design portfolio

Scroll down to see examples of presentations (non-confidential ones)

"Can you show me examples of your work?" is a very legitimate question. The problem is that most of the work I do is confidential: fund raising presentations, Board strategy documents. And even if the content is not confidential (analyst presentations), my clients prefer not to have material with outdated numbers and strategic content sitting on the Internet.

What I have done on this page is list a few presentations that give a sense for the presentation design style I use. What is harder to get across is the approach to story telling I use. However, if project discussions get serious, I can ask permission from specific clients to share some of my work with you.

This was my own introduction presentation, still under the "Idea Transplant" brand. The information included was updated in 2012.

Click on the slides to browse.

This presentation is the basis for what I present when I am invited to speak about presentation design. The design is targeted at large audiences with big, bold images.

Most of my work is confidential, so the presentations I can show here are ones that are in the public domain. I realise that you would not use impressionist paintings in serious Board presentations.

Click on the slides to browse.

This presentation was written in my presentation design app SlideMagic. It shows how muted colours, strict grid-based layouts and black and white images can create a professional look and feel of the presentation.

Click on the slides to browse.

This is a 6-minute startup pitch that I designed a number of years ago. My graphical style has moved on since then, but the story telling approach is still very up to date.

The challenge was to explain the technology and its potential in a very short time

Press the triangle to play the video.

Clients all over the world

Presentation design projects can be done remotely

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Clients all over the world

Presentation design projects can be done remotely

We are based in Tel Aviv, but serves clients all over the world. The majority of clients are in the U.S. (New York, Rhode Island, California, Alabama, Washington, Washington DC) with additional clients in Canada, the UK, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Italy, Singapore, and Switzerland.

We need to plan carefully, Tel Aviv is 7 hours ahead of New York, and has a work week that runs from Sunday to Thursday, and holidays do not always overlap.

Some clients even prefer to work with someone in an opposite time zone. Requests for changes that are emailed out in the evening are returned the next morning you come in the office.

Phone, email, and screen sharing software makes it perfectly possible to run projects long distance. In fact, this is how things are done with many clients in Tel Aviv, within driving distance from the office!

Practicalities

Cost, timing, and approach

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Practicalities

Cost, timing, and approach

A typical project starts with a 10 minute phone call, where we get to know each other. If we think there is a potential for a project that fits within the budget and timelines, we schedule a one hour briefing call where we go over your pitch in detail. Usually we discuss some sort of existing presentation via screen sharing software. But it is the audio track during this discussion that I find most important. The existing slides are the background for an intense question and answer discussion where I try to get my head around your specific pitch. We skip over things that are obvious, we dive deep into things that are not. After this call (which is free of charge), I am ready to submit a detailed and specific cost and time proposal.

I work in Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, or - if you are adventurous - I can design a presentation in my new presentation design app SlideMagic.

A typical presentation design project takes a lapse time of 2-3 weeks. I say lapse time because I work on multiple projects in parallel, and believe that in order to let the creative process work, you need to put things to rest now and then. During this process we start from a completely blank sheet of paper. We do not do slide make over work. Early on, we do a quick confirmation of the look and feel, hopefully have a 70% draft ready in a week or so, and can iterate towards a final end product in 1-2 weeks after that (often taken into account feedback from trial pitches to friendly audiences).

The key question: what does it cost? Every project is different, and therefore it is hard for me to give a generic estimate. Let's discuss your specific situation and I can provide a quote.

Reach out

Let's talk about your presentation design project

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Reach out

Let's talk about your presentation design project

Reach out to us to find out how we can help create your presentation.

Telephone: +1 (917) 472 9769Email: contact@slidemagic.com

Please note that we are on EST + 7 hours, with a Sunday to Thursday work week (we are closed Friday and Saturday)